[ Algorithms ] [ Web Site Design/Layout ] [ HTML ] [ DHTML ] [ JavaScript a.k.a. ECMAScript ] [ Java ] [ Win32 ] [ Perl ] [ ASP ] [ E-Commerce ] [ UML ] [ UNIX ] [ SQL ] [ C++ ] [ Compilers and Compiler Generators ] [ Tcl/Tk ] [ Interesting Standards ]

Need a useful book fast? Start with these.
I spent the hours scouring pages for you.
My criteria for books:

• No fluff
• Real-world code & code snippets
• Good expounding of algorithms & concepts
• Real diagrams!
• Not all text

Most all books are $50 to $60, and usually come with a CD-ROM, $40 without.

Algorithms

• Algorithms in C++, 3rd Ed., by Robert Sedgewick .
  This is the same as the original C book except with C++. Unfortunately, variable names are single letters. Fortunately, Algorithms are illutrated with graphics.

Web Site Design

• Don't make me think, 2nd Ed.: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, by Steve Krug (QUE Press)

HTML

• Hip Pocket Guide to HTML 4 (IDG Books). HTML 4.01 no longer published.
  Good for HTML 3 & 4 - shows deprecated tags. Note: this does not fit in a shirt or in a hip pocket!
• http://www.visibone.com/ laminated charts!

DHTML

• O'Reilly Dynamic HTML
• Writing Cross Browser Dynamic HTML, by Heather Williamson
• Javascript Bible, by Danny Goodman, (John Wiley & Sons press). has good examples & reference. book site

JavaScript a.k.a. ECMAScript

• http://www.visibone.com/ laminated charts!
• JavaScript bible - Danny Goodman (not an entirely complete reference, but has useful snippets & lots of good info)
• ECMAScript 2.6.2 3rd ed. 1999 specification in PDF, HTML format, in print and on CD. (more method and property info than the books! but needs notes though...). A handy addition to the Javascript bible or any Javascript book.
• ECMA-290 ECMAScript Components Specification (June 1999)
• ECMA-357 ECMAScript for XML (E4X) Specification, 2nd edition (December 2005) ISO/IEC 22537
• O'Reilly Javascript Cookbook

Java

• Java 2 (Osbourne/McGraw-Hill press). well, we are up to Java 6 now. so this is out of date. Java updates quickly. Even the core series has been updated to reflect the new API. You can always compile to backrev version JVMs.
• Java Enterprise Applications (Osbourne/McGraw-Hill press). this book is out of date too.

Win32

• Win32 Network Programming : Windows 95 and Windows NT Network Programming Using MFC by Ralph Davis, (Addison-Wesley Professional/Pearson press) book site
  Libraries aren't all that great, but has wonderful ideas. not in print any more.
• Multithreading Applications in Win32, the complete guide to threads, by James Beveridge & Robert Weiner (Addison-Wesley Professional/Pearson press). book site.
  excellent!
• Win32 System Services, by Marshall Brain (Prentice-Hall press/Pearson) book site
  Very good book. Lots of great ideas and techniques.
• Programming Windows 5th ed. by Charles Petzold (Win32), Microsoft Press
• Win32 System Programming by Johnson M. Hart, (Addison Wesley press). book site

PERL

• Programming PERL, by Larry Wall & Jon Orwant & Tom Christiansen, (O'Reilly press)
• Advananced PERL programming, by Simon Cozens & Allison Randall, (O'Reilly press)
• Perl 5 Interactive Course, by Jon Orwant, (Waite Group press/Pearson), also available here. book site. no new copies available. first link is the certified course.

ASP

• Unlocking Active Server Pages (New Riders press)
• Teach yourself Active Web Database Programming in 21 days (Sams Publishing)
• Developing ASP Components, 2nd Ed., by Shelley Powers (O'Reilly Press)
• Now that we have ASP.net, you are sure to want to get a newer book than these.

E-Commerce

• Beginning E-Commerce [with Visual Basic, ASP, SQL Server 7.0 and MTS], by Matthew Reynolds (Wrox Press)
  Note: there isn't an advanced book yet.
• The e-commerce Question and Answer Book, by Anita Rosen (AMACOM).
  Has a few good questions.

UML

• Doing Hard Time, by Booch (Addison-wesley press). book site
  Hard realtime UML. This is not light reading. Want to make a Realtime Embedded System? this is the way to model it.
• Instant UML 2.0 2nd Ed., by Pierre-Alain Muller (wrox press)
  Not a beginner's book to the UML. Thinking in UML is the hard part. The book (at least to me) doesn't lend itself well to this. Doesn't cover multihreading or related issues. At my last check, UML folk are still hammering out how to show multithreading effectively.

UNIX

• Advanced UNIX Programming, 2nd Ed., by Rochkind, (Addison-Wesley Professional). book site
  Textbook

SQL

• http://www.visibone.com/ MySQL laminated charts!
• SQL Reference (osbourne/mcgraw-hill press)
  comes with 3-month eval of all major DB's - works on 95! Highlights differences between the vendor products. Decent.
• Oracle8i beginner's Guide (Oracle press)

C++

• C++ Primer, 4th Ed., by Stanley B. Lippman, (Addison-Wesley press) $55. book site
• The C++ Programming Language, Special Edition, by Bjarne Stroustrup (Addison-Wesley Professional press/Pearson) $62. (Hardcover - REV) book site
  Textbook reference. One of Stroustrup's newer C++ language references. This has details you probably won't find elsewhere.
• Effective C++, by Scott Meyers, (Addison Wesley press) $50. book site
  If I remember right, this covers things like how to avoid creating temporaries.
• More Effective C++, by Scott Meyers, (Addison Wesley press) $50. book site
• Effective STL, by Scott Meyers, (Addison Wesley press) $50. book site
• The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference, by Nicolai M. Josuttis, (Addison Wesley press). $75. book site. Seems to be fairly complete and uses recent standards. . I miss my old STL book severely. This one is about 1.5" thick and is hardbound (nice). has OK examples sprinkled throughout. There ought to be a STL cookbook by now! but there isn't.
• Generic Programming and the STL : Using and Extending the C++ Standard Template Library by Matthew H. Austern. $60. Textbook Hardcover
• STL Tutorial and Reference Guide : C++ Programming with the Standard Template Library by David R. Musser, Atul Saini, Gillmer J. Derge, Gillmer J. Derge, Gilmer J. Derge. $55. Textbook Hardcover - REV
• Extended STL : Collections and Iterators, Volume 1 by Matthew Wilson. $50. Paperback - Book and CD-ROM
• C++ Program Guide to the Standard Template Library, by Mark Nelson, Paperback, 1995, used $4.99 This book was my favorite STL book.
• pick one of the many "Data Structures and Program Design in C++" books.

Compilers and Compiler Generators

• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, & Tools with Gradiance (pkg for students in a class), 2nd Edition, By Alfred V. Aho, Monica S. Lam, Ravi Sethi, Jeffrey D. Ullman, (Published by Addison-Wesley). $111. THE compiler textbook used in colleges, though you still need a lot of extra help. has a section on compiler generators (yacc). price sure has gone up over the years. was $40-60.
• lex & yacc, by John R. Levine, Tony Mason, Doug Brown. ISBN: 1565920007, O'Reilly Press, $30
  if you want to use the GNU flex and bison, this is the book to get. implements the SQL language, but I don't know if it goes into semantics there, which is what I really am looking for. I want to know if you can do { $1, $2... } C code on a nonterminal.

Tcl/Tk

• Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk, by Brent B. Welch & Jeffrey Hobbs & Ken Jones, (Prentice-Hall press/Pearson) book site

Perl/Tk

• Perl/Tk is not the same as Tcl/TK feature-wise. they are not portable between each other just by converting code. Unfortunately, Perl/Tk is not completely documented. What few things you can find in books, try here.

Interesting Standards

• ECMA-222 Adaptive Lossless Data Compression Algorithm (June 1995) ISO/IEC 15200 *
• ECMA-234 Application Programming Interface for Windows (APIW) (December 1995)
• ECMA-262 ECMAScript Language Specification, 3rd edition (December 1999) ISO/IEC 16262 *
• ECMA-290 ECMAScript Components Specification (June 1999)
• ECMA-357 ECMAScript for XML (E4X) Specification, 2nd edition (December 2005) ISO/IEC 22537
• ECMA-267 120 mm DVD - Read-Only Disk, 3rd edition (April 2001) ISO/IEC 16448
• ECMA-268 80 mm DVD - Read-Only Disk, 3rd edition (April 2001) ISO/IEC 16449
• ECMA-330 120 mm (4,7 Gbytes per side) and 80 mm (1,46 Gbytes per side) DVD Rewritable Disk (DVD-RAM), 3rd edition (June 2005) ISO/IEC 17592
• ECMA-274 Data Interchange on 120 mm Optical Disk using +RW Format - Capacity: 3,0 Gbytes and 6,0 Gbytes, 2nd edition (June 1999) ISO/IEC 16969
• ECMA-337 Data Interchange on 120 mm and 80 mm - Optical Disk using +RW Format - Capacity: 4,7 and 1,46 Gbytes per side (Recording speed up to 4X), 3rd edition (December 2005) ISO/IEC 17341
• ECMA-338 80 mm (1,46 Gbytes per side) and 120 mm (4,70 Gbytes per side) DVD Re-recordable Disk (DVD-RW) (December 2002) ISO/IEC 17342
• ECMA-371 Data Interchange on 120 mm and 80 mm Optical Disk using +RW HS Format - Capacity: 4,7 and 1,46 Gbytes per Side (Recording speed 8X) (December 2005) ISO/IEC 26925 *
• ECMA-374 Data Interchange on 120 mm and 80 mm Optical Disk using +RW DL Format Capacity: 8,55 and 2,66 Gbytes per Side (Recording speed 2,4X) (December 2006) ISO/IEC DIS 29642
• ECMA-349 Data Interchange on 120 mm and 80 mm Optical Disk using +R Format - Capacity: 4,7 and 1,46 Gbytes per Side (Recording speed up to 16X), 3rd edition (December 2005) ISO/IEC 17344
• ECMA-359 80 mm (1,46 Gbytes per side) and 120 mm (4,70 Gbytes per side) DVD Recordable Disk (DVD-R) (December 2004) ISO/IEC 23912
• ECMA-364 Data interchange on 120 mm and 80 mm Optical Disk using +R DL Format - Capacity: 8,55 and 2,66 Gbytes per Side (Recording speed up to 16X), 3rd edition (December 2007) ISO/IEC 25434
• ECMA-363 Universal 3D File Format, 4th edition (June 2007)
• ECMA-367 Eiffel: Analysis, Design and Programming Language, 2nd edition (June 2006) ISO/IEC 25436
• ECMA-372 C++/CLI Language Specification (December 2005)
• ECMA-376 Office Open XML File Formats (December 2006) ISO/IEC DIS 29500
• ECMA-379 Test Method for the Estimation of the Archival Lifetime of Optical Media (June 2007) ISO/IEC DIS 10995